Ponytail

Ponytail, by Dietrich Gebert, puts "the laziest senior dev in the room" inside your coding agent. Before it writes anything, it reads the code the change touches, then stops at the first rung that holds: does this need to exist, is it already in the codebase, does the standard library or the platform do it, is there an installed dependency, can it be one line, and only then the minimum that works. It never cuts validation, error handling, security or accessibility. Logic with a branch, a loop, a parser, money or security leaves one small test behind, and every reply ends with what was skipped or not checked. What its skills and commands do - /ponytail lite, full, ultra or off: set how hard it pushes, or turn it off - /ponytail-review: review the current diff and the code it touches for bugs, security, real load, missing tests, slow paths and what to cut - /ponytail-audit: the same checks across the whole repo, ranked so you know what to fix first - /ponytail-debt: collect the shortcut: comments you deferred into a ledger - /ponytail-gain: show the maker's benchmark scoreboard - /ponytail-help: a quick reference In Claude Code A band above the prompt shows what the current task costs, its tokens and agent time, how often it reused existing code, and whether the tests passed after the last change. A local board page shows the same across your projects. /ponytail band hides it. The band needs Claude Code 2.1.290 or later. How to install it In Claude Code, run /plugin marketplace add DietrichGebert/ponytail, then /plugin install ponytail@ponytail. In Codex, run codex plugin marketplace add DietrichGebert/ponytail, then codex plugin add ponytail@ponytail. It's also a Gemini CLI extension, and the repository has steps and rule files for Copilot, Cursor, OpenCode and more. Good to know - No sign-in, and no config file needed. - The band's task log stays on your machine, in ~/.config/ponytail/band/, unless you set its optional webhook. - The maker says to install it only from DietrichGebert/ponytail on GitHub or @dietrichgebert/ponytail on npm. - It's MIT licensed.

• “Add a date picker to the signup form.”

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• “Review my uncommitted changes before I merge.”

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• “Audit this repo and tell me what to fix first.”

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• “Collect the shortcuts we deferred into a ledger.”

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• “Before you build this, check whether the codebase or the standard library already does it.”

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• “Turn ponytail up to ultra for this refactor.”

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